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Oct. 19th, 2008 01:29 pmColumbia University
Monday, October 16, 2006
2:10pm
"Professor Ulbrich?" Jonathan's been hovering in the hallway in what he hopes is the manner of a student waiting to talk to a busy teacher, and moves forward as the old man steps out of his office. "Sorry to bother you again, but --"
Ulbrich's eyes sharpen again behind his glasses, and the glance he turns on Jonathan is remarkably unfriendly. "Are you," he sniffs, turning to lock his office door.
"...sir?" Trying to sound confused, instead of alarmed.
"You and your, mm, colleague weren't entirely honest with me about how you came by that passage." He pockets his keys, picks up his battered leather briefcase, and straightens his glasses to glare at Jonathan again. "The news may take a while to trickle in here, but it does make it eventually. Would you mind telling me exactly what you two have to do with poor Mr. Rosen?"
"Funny," says Jonathan, making the snap decision to go on the counteroffensive, "I was gonna ask you the same question." He takes out his card, and holds it out so that the Angel Investigations logo is clearly visible.
Ulbrich squints at the card, and frowns. "I see. Small wonder you lied, if you suspect me of some sort of, mm, foul play --" he pronounces the words with a fastidious sort of irony, as though handling them with tongs -- "but I can tell you in all honesty that I've never meet the boy, and I don't see what you might think I could possibly have to do with it."
"Really? 'Cause we have to wonder where else on this campus he might have learned Sulcaric."
A heavy sigh of irritation. "You didn't listen to a word I said Wednesday, did you. I couldn't have taught him to speak Sulcaric that fluently. No human being could have. And he didn't learn it out of a book, either, I can tell you that now that I've seen the tape."
The card doesn't seem to have quite had the effect Jonathan was hoping for. He repockets it slowly. "What do you mean?"
"I had to go over it half a dozen times before I caught it, but the tonal modulation's unmistakable. He's speaking in the infantile mode."
"The what?"
"The child's mode. Ethkelt t'hyskraen." Jonathan starts at the word, but the professor doesn't notice; he's sliding into full-on lecture mode. "I think 'milk-speech' would be the closest, mm, approximate translation. A poetic way of referring to the mode in which Sulcar children first learn to verbalize, while they're still young enough to be nursing. It's an interesting cognate to the way we speak of something learned in early childhood as 'with his mother's milk.' Leading some to speculate that we may have, mm, borrowed the figure of speech from the Sulcaric. A speculation I consider thoroughly unfounded and highly unlikely," he adds with another sniff.
"What's that word again? The one you translated as milk?"
"T'hyskraen," Ulbrich repeats. "The part of it that actually means milk is hysk; the rest of it ... well, it's a complex construction. The last syllable's a root word that can mean 'swallow' or 'acquire' or 'master', in the sense of mastering a skill or a body of knowledge. Internalize, I suppose, is the common thread there. Which means that there's a pun of sorts in the compound phrase. It could mean literally 'the speech connected to the drinking of milk' or even 'the speech that one drinks with milk', but a much, mm, clearer way to render it would be 'the speech of nurslings' or 'the speech one learns while nursing'." A dusty chuckle. "Babytalk, in other words."
"Babytalk?" Jonathan echoes in disbelief. "I saw the translation. It didn't look much like babytalk to me."
The professor shrugs. "The usage might be metaphorical. My point is, that poor boy theoretically could have constructed and memorized a set speech in Sulcaric for some bizarre reason, but for him to have found the, mm, exceedingly rare source material on the t'hyskraen mode -- it's beyond the bounds of plausibility. Personally I'm becoming inclined to give a little more weight to your theory of a bodyswap."
"I don't think so." At the professor's questioning look, Jonathan reluctantly adds, "He was repeating the name of one of his friends. Whatever else is going on, I think it's still him in there."
After a short silence, Ulbrich gives another sigh and starts shuffling down the corridor. "In that case, I confess I'm baffled. It simply shouldn't be possible. And lord knows enough human scholars have tried."
Jonathan chews his lower lip for a moment, trailing at the older man's side. "Professor," he says slowly, "could that word actually mean something like 'the speech one learns from drinking hysk?"
Ulbrich turns a startled glance on him. "Interesting you should suggest that. I seem to recall that one of Catherine Harkness's students once wrote a paper on that very question. Suggesting a semi-mystical philosophy on the part of the Sulcar themselves, a belief that the hysk is somehow, mm, transubstantiated directly into knowledge, or into intelligence. Absurd, on the face of it. Sulcar aren't given to superstition of that sort; that's much more a human kind of wish-fulfillment."
"Wish-fulfillment?"
"Of course." That dusty-dry chuckle again. "What human being wouldn't want to be able to simply swallow something and become smarter than we are?"
Monday, October 16, 2006
2:10pm
"Professor Ulbrich?" Jonathan's been hovering in the hallway in what he hopes is the manner of a student waiting to talk to a busy teacher, and moves forward as the old man steps out of his office. "Sorry to bother you again, but --"
Ulbrich's eyes sharpen again behind his glasses, and the glance he turns on Jonathan is remarkably unfriendly. "Are you," he sniffs, turning to lock his office door.
"...sir?" Trying to sound confused, instead of alarmed.
"You and your, mm, colleague weren't entirely honest with me about how you came by that passage." He pockets his keys, picks up his battered leather briefcase, and straightens his glasses to glare at Jonathan again. "The news may take a while to trickle in here, but it does make it eventually. Would you mind telling me exactly what you two have to do with poor Mr. Rosen?"
"Funny," says Jonathan, making the snap decision to go on the counteroffensive, "I was gonna ask you the same question." He takes out his card, and holds it out so that the Angel Investigations logo is clearly visible.
Ulbrich squints at the card, and frowns. "I see. Small wonder you lied, if you suspect me of some sort of, mm, foul play --" he pronounces the words with a fastidious sort of irony, as though handling them with tongs -- "but I can tell you in all honesty that I've never meet the boy, and I don't see what you might think I could possibly have to do with it."
"Really? 'Cause we have to wonder where else on this campus he might have learned Sulcaric."
A heavy sigh of irritation. "You didn't listen to a word I said Wednesday, did you. I couldn't have taught him to speak Sulcaric that fluently. No human being could have. And he didn't learn it out of a book, either, I can tell you that now that I've seen the tape."
The card doesn't seem to have quite had the effect Jonathan was hoping for. He repockets it slowly. "What do you mean?"
"I had to go over it half a dozen times before I caught it, but the tonal modulation's unmistakable. He's speaking in the infantile mode."
"The what?"
"The child's mode. Ethkelt t'hyskraen." Jonathan starts at the word, but the professor doesn't notice; he's sliding into full-on lecture mode. "I think 'milk-speech' would be the closest, mm, approximate translation. A poetic way of referring to the mode in which Sulcar children first learn to verbalize, while they're still young enough to be nursing. It's an interesting cognate to the way we speak of something learned in early childhood as 'with his mother's milk.' Leading some to speculate that we may have, mm, borrowed the figure of speech from the Sulcaric. A speculation I consider thoroughly unfounded and highly unlikely," he adds with another sniff.
"What's that word again? The one you translated as milk?"
"T'hyskraen," Ulbrich repeats. "The part of it that actually means milk is hysk; the rest of it ... well, it's a complex construction. The last syllable's a root word that can mean 'swallow' or 'acquire' or 'master', in the sense of mastering a skill or a body of knowledge. Internalize, I suppose, is the common thread there. Which means that there's a pun of sorts in the compound phrase. It could mean literally 'the speech connected to the drinking of milk' or even 'the speech that one drinks with milk', but a much, mm, clearer way to render it would be 'the speech of nurslings' or 'the speech one learns while nursing'." A dusty chuckle. "Babytalk, in other words."
"Babytalk?" Jonathan echoes in disbelief. "I saw the translation. It didn't look much like babytalk to me."
The professor shrugs. "The usage might be metaphorical. My point is, that poor boy theoretically could have constructed and memorized a set speech in Sulcaric for some bizarre reason, but for him to have found the, mm, exceedingly rare source material on the t'hyskraen mode -- it's beyond the bounds of plausibility. Personally I'm becoming inclined to give a little more weight to your theory of a bodyswap."
"I don't think so." At the professor's questioning look, Jonathan reluctantly adds, "He was repeating the name of one of his friends. Whatever else is going on, I think it's still him in there."
After a short silence, Ulbrich gives another sigh and starts shuffling down the corridor. "In that case, I confess I'm baffled. It simply shouldn't be possible. And lord knows enough human scholars have tried."
Jonathan chews his lower lip for a moment, trailing at the older man's side. "Professor," he says slowly, "could that word actually mean something like 'the speech one learns from drinking hysk?"
Ulbrich turns a startled glance on him. "Interesting you should suggest that. I seem to recall that one of Catherine Harkness's students once wrote a paper on that very question. Suggesting a semi-mystical philosophy on the part of the Sulcar themselves, a belief that the hysk is somehow, mm, transubstantiated directly into knowledge, or into intelligence. Absurd, on the face of it. Sulcar aren't given to superstition of that sort; that's much more a human kind of wish-fulfillment."
"Wish-fulfillment?"
"Of course." That dusty-dry chuckle again. "What human being wouldn't want to be able to simply swallow something and become smarter than we are?"
